The Gist: Seeing Trump in person helped explain why the flamboyant billionaire is playing so well with white, working class Republicans.

From The Reporter's Notebook

As TPM's Tierney Sneed reported, a 2016-fueled escalation in crime hysteria isn't going to help criminal justice reform efforts. Reformers argue that the "crime spike" headlines are overblowing small increases in the murder rates in a few cities recently, and overall crime is trending way down from what it was in the '80s and '90s, when much of the tough on crime legislation that created mass incarceration was passed.

From a TPM Prime member: "Sure, we can acknowledge that being liberal is not the same thing as being devoid of racism. We can acknowledge that some people with broad, general liberal views have deeply bigoted beliefs that may be directed at one or more other groups… racial, ethnic, religious, etc. We can accept that it is possible to go through life while blissfully unaware of how your path to success was paved by past and perhaps present harms inflicted on others. And we can take all of that for what it's worth, while recognizing that it's window dressing — you won't transform this nation's issues with racism and privilege by complaining about real and imagined microagressions from the population that is trying to effect change, and in fact such an approach could get in the way of the type of public discussion and candor that our nation needs as part of the path forward."